The flaps of the fat lady’s tent were down, but I yanked them open. I saw Annie struggling with her enormous dress, pulling down the fabric folds to cover her body—and the dress itself, or something inside it, was fighting back.
“Quickly, my dears, quickly!” When she saw me, a look of horror crossed her face (I often get that reaction). She did not look like a sweet granny now; her whole face was much skinnier, as if someone had deflated her. Annie still had many chins, but they hung like wattles around her neck.
As she struggled and thrashed with her recalcitrant dress, the fabric tore, and a goblin’s smooth, ugly head poked out. The second young goblin also squirmed and broke free, ripping the dress to shreds as they both escaped from their unorthodox hiding place. Inside the tentlike flower-print fabric, they left behind a rather scrawny-looking Annie in a one-piece bathing suit. The goblins hissed and snapped, annoyed to be exposed.
Goblins are like small, gray-skinned elves . . . if those elves happened to be born from a mother saturated with toxic waste and poisonous thoughts. Their huge mouths were filled with needle-like teeth, and their glowing eyes could have been used as a plumber’s utility light. As the goblin twins tried to scramble away, Annie wrapped her arms around them and pulled the creatures close to her in a motherly embrace.
There was hardly anything to Annie now. With all her loose skin, she looked as if she was wasting away, despite the numerous plates of ribs, cookies, etc., she consumed every day. Then I realized that if she had been hiding the kleptomaniac creatures, they might have eaten much of the food.
The fat lady’s eyes were wide, her expression desperate. “You can’t take my boys!” She yanked the goblins closer, practically smothering them. “I was trying to protect them, and they helped me when I needed it most! They’re so sweet.” She held out her hand, and one of the goblins tried to bite it. Annie giggled.
More shouts came from outside the tent. Fazio, the now-noseless clown, staggered in, accompanied by Aldo, who’d thrown on his wig while he ran, as well as the werewolf lion tamer, who still held his bullwhip, ready to use it.
The vampire ringmaster barged in right behind them, distraught. “The police are coming. What the—” He stopped when he saw the goblins. “What the hell are those two doing here? With all the arrest warrants—”
As the kleptomaniac goblin twins tried to bolt, Calvin cracked his bullwhip, and they skittered back into Annie’s protective embrace.
“I won’t turn them out into the cold,” she said with a sniffle. “They’re just misunderstood. They stole things, but they didn’t mean anything bad by it.”
“Nothing bad?” Kowalski cried. “They stole Bela’s Air Commander medal. Without it, he didn’t think he could turn into a bat—and now he’s dead!”
Annie was disturbed by this. “But he started out dead.”
“I mean he’s really dead now!”
“Well, I’m sure they’re very sorry,” Annie insisted.
“The medallion was fake.” I held it up so everyone could see the words Made in China stamped on the back. “No intrinsic magic.”
Annie sounded defensive. “There—no harm done.”
The clown and the fortune-teller looked at the strangely emaciated form of the fat lady. Aldo said, “What happened to you? You used to be so . . . so . . .”
“Fat,” she answered.
“I was about to say substantial.” Then Aldo remembered his priorities. “And what happened to my fortune-telling cards?”
“I lost weight, thanks to your magic cards.” She sniffed, sounding glum. “When Harriet left the circus, I wanted to be in better shape to mother you all. It’s quite a job! I wanted to be healthy, go on a diet, so I signed up for a guaranteed Gypsy weight-loss routine. Mean Cuisine. I lost four hundred pounds—and now I can’t stop!”
Aldo scratched his wig, which was already askew. “What did my fortune-telling deck have to do with it?”
“I needed your cards, ones with real magic, and that’s why I took your deck six months ago.” She sniffed and made an excuse. “Well, you did leave them lying around a lot.” When the fortune-teller glared at her, she turned away. “I just had to have two specific cards, the fat lady and the skeleton. I superglued the cards together, read the spell from the Gypsy diet book, and this fat lady started to look more like a skeleton. Worked like a charm!”
“Uh, it was a charm,” I pointed out.
“But because of the superglue, I couldn’t separate the cards again. Impossible to break the spell. And I realized I was going to lose my livelihood! Being a fat lady is all I am . . . and believe me, there was a lot of me.” She pulled at the excessive folds of her torn dress. “Everybody loved me when I was a fat lady. Everyone wanted to hug me, lose themselves in my expansive . . . everything. I needed another fortune-telling deck, a fresh skeleton card and a fat lady card, so I could break the magic.”
“So you stole my other deck, too!” Aldo said.
“The goblin boys did.” Annie sounded ashamed. “You were much more careful after losing the first one, and I wasn’t exactly nimble enough to slip into your trailer unnoticed. The boys came back to the circus, looking for shelter and hoping to hide from the police, and I just asked them to do me that one favor. Unfortunately, once they got started . . .”
Officer McGoohan and four uniformed cops charged into the tent, all trying to fit through the open flap at once, as if they were performing their own circus clown act. Fortunately, because it was designed for a fat lady, the tent opening was double-wide.
McGoo’s a rough, tough cop who gets himself in trouble more often than the criminals do, but he and I have gotten each other out of trouble enough times, too. “Shamble, tell me what’s going on here.”
I rattled off a quick summary. “Fat lady hiding kleptomaniac goblins in her dress, a vampire trapeze artist accidentally murdered because he couldn’t change into a bat, deck of magic fortune-telling cards stolen—among other things.”
McGoo nodded. “Oh, another one of those cases.”
The goblins tried to bolt as the policemen rounded them up, and Calvin used his whip with great enthusiasm as well as precision. Even after the goblin thieves were handcuffed, they snapped with their needle-like teeth, trying to bite the hands that arrested them. Fortunately, among his other useful defensive items, McGoo kept a roll of duct tape on his belt, with which he secured the criminal goblins’ mouths.
“Oh, my poor dears,” Annie wailed. “They just need some love and understanding.”
“They need a little time behind bars,” I said. “Or at least doing community service.” All in all, I doubted the stolen items added up to more than a misdemeanor.
“There are other arrest warrants for those two.” McGoo was shaking his head. “And the fat lady was aiding and abetting.”
“For petty theft,” Kowalski said, troubled. “Bela might disagree, but he never liked to accept blame for anything. He did sign a waiver acknowledging the inherent risk in performing death-defying feats.”
Kowalski stood next to Annie. “The circus is like family, and Annie is part of it. We’re not pressing charges against her, and we’ll return all the stolen items to their rightful owners.”
“Except for my magic deck,” Aldo grumbled.
“I can track down another one,” I said. “Part of my services.”
“And my Reuben sandwich.”
“Can’t help you there. . . .”
Without asking permission, the clown and the fortune-teller worked together—a victory in itself—to open the trunks in the back of Annie’s tent, moving aside the plates piled with cookies and gnawed rib bones. Fazio lifted out a bright red ball. “Here’s my nose!”
Digging deeper, they also found what was left of the deck of magic fortune-telling cards. Aldo was dismayed as he counted through them to find the skeleton and fat lady cards torn in half, by which Annie had apparently broken the weight-loss spell; other cards were missing as well, probably strewn on the gro
und somewhere along the midway.
The former fat lady wept, still clutching at straws. “Maybe if everything’s returned, there won’t be any charges filed?”
“Suit yourselves.” McGoo shook his head as the cops wrestled the still-squirming goblins out of the tent. “Those boys have already gotten themselves into enough trouble, more than just robbing circus folk. They’ll probably serve a year in juvie, maybe get out early for good behavior. Or maybe not.”
“Yes, they are quite a handful,” the fat lady said. “Even I have to admit that.” Looking longingly after the wayward goblins, Annie drew a deep shuddering breath, then turned to Oscar Kowalski. “I don’t suppose the circus has any use for a skinny lady? At least until I fill out a little bit? The spell is broken, and I’m gaining weight again . . . and it’ll be even faster when the twins don’t eat most of my food.”
The ringmaster thought long and hard. “I could use someone who understands the circus—and business. I’m no good at handling the day-to-day paperwork, the administration, managing the employees. I’m a showman, not an accountant.” He propped himself up, snatched off his top hat. “I never was much good at the business side of things. You’d think a vampire circus would want to be in the red.”
Annie finally brightened. “I can help. I can be like a mother to everyone. And if I manage the money, it’ll be like giving everybody an allowance!”
Fazio had reapplied his nose, although his makeup remained smeared. He looked at the remaining platters of food. “Annie, you wouldn’t happen to have a banana-cream pie I could smash into someone’s face? Just for the gag?”
“Sorry, dear, I only have cookies.”
The zombie clown threw cookies at Calvin, but nobody laughed. Rather, the werewolf lion tamer caught them and munched politely.
Aldo came up to me, smiling. “Thank you for everything, Mr. Chambeaux. You did track down the cards, and the thieves. And if you can find a replacement deck . . .” He held out his abbreviated deck of magic cards, shuffled them, and extended the pile to me. “Pick a card, any card.”
I did, looked at it myself, then slid it back into the deck. “No, thanks.”
Aldo frowned. “Don’t you want to know your future?”
“I’m a detective,” I said. “I’d rather figure it out for myself.”
Keep reading to enjoy a preview of
the next rib-tickling adventure of
Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I.
Hair Raising
Coming from Kensington in 2013
CHAPTER 1
I’ve always been baffled by the things people do to amuse themselves, but this illegal cockatrice fighting ring was more bizarre than most.
Rusty, the full-furred werewolf who raised the hideous creatures and pitted them against each other in the ring, had hired me to watch out for “suspicious behavior.” So, there I was in a crowd of unnaturals who gathered in an empty warehouse, laying down bets to watch chicken-dragon-viper monstrosities tear each other apart. What could possibly be suspicious?
No case was too strange for Chambeaux & Deyer Investigations, so I agreed to keep my eyes open. “You’ll have a great time, Mr. Shamble,” Rusty growled. “Tonight is family night.”
“It’s Chambeaux,” I corrected him, though the mispronunciation may have been the result of him talking through all those teeth in his mouth rather than not actually knowing my name.
Rusty was a gruff, barrel-chested werewolf with a full head—and I mean a full head—of bristling reddish fur that stuck out in all directions. He raised cockatrices in backyard coops in a run-down neighborhood at the edge of town. He wore bib overalls and sported large tattoos on the meat of his upper arms (although his fur was so thick they were barely visible).
Cockatrice fighting was technically illegal and had been denounced by many animal activist groups. (Most of the activists, however, were unfamiliar with the mythological bestiary and had no idea what a cockatrice was, but they were sure “cockatrice fighting” had to be a bad thing from the sound of it.) I wasn’t one to pass judgment; when ranked among unsavory activities in the Unnatural Quarter, this one didn’t even make the junior varsity team.
Rusty insisted it was big business, and he had even offered me an extra ticket so that Sheyenne, my ghost girlfriend, could join me. I declined on her behalf. She’s not much of a sports fan.
Inside a decrepit old warehouse, the spectators cheered, growled, howled, or made whatever sound was appropriate to their particular unnatural species. Even some humans had slunk in to place bets and watch the violence, hoping that violence didn’t get done to them here in the dark underbelly of the Quarter.
In the echoing warehouse, the unsettling ambient noises reflected back, making the crowd sound twice as large as it really was. Previously, the warehouse had hosted illegal raves, and I could imagine the thunderously monotonous booming beat accompanied by migraine-inducing strobe lights. After the rave craze had ended, the warehouse manager was happy to let the unused empty space become the new home for the next best thing.
I tried to blend in with the rest of the spectators; nobody noticed an undead guy standing there in a bullet-riddled sport jacket. Thanks to an excellent embalming job and good hygiene habits, I was a well-preserved zombie, and I worked hard to maintain my physical condition so that I could pass for mostly human. Mostly.
The crowd hadn’t come here to see and be seen. The center of attention was a high-walled enclosure that might have originally been designed as a skateboard park for lawn gnomes. The barricades were high enough that—in theory at least—snarling, venomous cockatrices could not leap over them and attack the audience (although, as Rusty explained it, a few bloodthirsty attendees took out long-shot wagers that it would happen; those bettors generally kept to the back rows).
While Rusty was in back wrangling with the cockatrice cages, preparing the creatures for the match, his bumbling nephew Furguson went among the crowds with his notepad and tickets, taking bets. Lycanthropy doesn’t run in families, but the story I’d heard was that Rusty had gone on a bender and collapsed half on and half off his bed; while trying to make his uncle more comfortable, Furguson was so clumsy he had scratched and infected himself on the claws. Watching the gangly young werewolf now, I was inclined to accept that as an operating theory.
The fight attendees had tickets, scraps of paper, printed programs listing the colorful names of the cockatrice combatants—Sour Lemonade, Hissy Fit, Snarling Shirley, and so on. The enthusiasts were a motley assortment of vampires, zombies, mummies, trolls, and a big ogre with a squeaky voice who took up three times as much space as any other audience member. And there were werewolves of both types—fulltime fully-furred wolfmen (affectionately, or deprecatingly, called “Hairballs” by the other type), and the once-a-month werewolves who looked human most of the time and transformed only under a full moon (called “Monthlies” by the other side). They were all werewolves to me, but there had always been friction between the two types, and it was only growing worse.
It’s human, or inhuman, nature: People will find a way to make a big deal out of their differences—the smaller, the better. It made me think of the Montagues and the Capulets, if I wanted to be highbrow, or the Hatfields and the McCoys, if I wanted to be lowbrow. (Or the Jets and the Sharks, if I wanted to be musical.)
Rusty asked me to pay particularly close attention to two burly Monthlies, heavily tattooed “bad biker” types named Scratch and Sniff. Even in their non-lycanthrope form, and even among the crowd of monsters, these two were intimidating. They wore thick, dirty fur overcoats that they claimed were made of werewolf pelts—nothing provocative there!—coated with road dust and stained with clotted blotches that looked like blood. Known troublemakers, Scratch and Sniff liked to bash their victims’ heads just to see what might come out. They frequently attended the cockatrice fights, and often caused problems, but Rusty allowed them to stay because they placed such large bets.
In recent fights, however, a lar
ge fraction of the money was disappearing from the betting pool, as much as 20 percent. Rusty was sure that Scratch and Sniff had somehow been robbing the pot, and I was supposed to keep my eyes open. But these two didn’t strike me as the type who would subtly skim 20 percent of anything; my guess, they would take the whole pot of money and storm away with as much ruckus as possible.
Furguson wandered among the crowd, recording bets with a pencil in his notepad, accepting wads of bills and stuffing them into his pockets. As he collected money he was very diligent in writing down each wager and recording the ticket number. For weeks, Rusty had pored over the notations, trying to figure out why so much money went missing. He counted and recounted the bills, added and re-added the list of bets placed, and he simply could not find what was happening to so much of the take.
Suddenly, the Rocky Balboa theme blared over the old rave speakers that had been left behind (confiscated by the warehouse owner for nonpayment). Eager fans surrounded Furguson in a frantic flurry, placing their last wagers, shoving money at the gangly werewolf as if they were over-caffeinated bidders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Now, I’ve been a private detective in the Unnatural Quarter for years, working with my legal crusader/partner Robin Deyer. We had a decent business until I’d been shot in the back of the head—which might have been the end of the story, but I woke up as a zombie, clawed my way out of the grave, and got right back to work. Being undead is not a disadvantage in the Quarter, and the number of cases I’ve solved, both before and after my murder, is fairly impressive. I’m very observant and persistent, and I have a good analytical mind.
Sometimes, though, I solve cases through dumb luck, which is what happened now.
While Rusty worked in the back, rattling the cages and giving pep talks to his violent amalgamated monsters, the Rocky theme played louder, and the last-minute bettors waved money at Furguson. They yelled out the names of their chosen cockatrice, snatched their tickets, and the gangly werewolf stuffed wads of cash into his pockets, made change, grew flustered, took more money, stuffed it into other pockets. He was so bumbling and so overwhelmed that bills dropped out of his pockets onto the floor, unnoticed—by Furguson, but not by the other audience members. As they pressed closer to him like a murder of carrion crows, they snatched up whatever random bills they could find. In fact, it was so well choreographed, the whole mess seemed like part of the evening’s entertainment.
Stakeout at the Vampire Circus Page 4